Great video from RSA Animate about honesty and cheating.
Religion
07
Dec 10
Hunting Lone Wolves
Bruce Schneier linked to this Naval Postgraduate School Thesis by Nathan R. Springer [pdf]:
Abstract:
This thesis will scrutinize the histories of our nation’s three most prolific domestic lone wolf terrorists: Tim McVeigh, Ted Kaczynski, and Eric Rudolph. It will establish a chronological pattern to their radicalization and reveal that their communal ideological beliefs, psychology, attributes, traits, and training take place along a common chronological timeline. Their pattern of radicalization can be used as an indicator of lone wolf terrorist radicalization development in future cases. This thesis establishes a strikingly similar chronological pattern of radicalization that was present in each terrorist’s biography. This pattern can identify future lone wolf terrorist radicalization activity upstream. It can provide a valuable portent to apply in the analysis of potential lone terrorists, potentially enabling law enforcement to prevent tragedies emerging from the identified population through psychological assistance, evaluation, training, or, in the worst case, detention.
The political, economic, cultural, and social environment in the United States lends itself to a recurrence of the 1990s and domestic terrorism. The paper discusses the common themes in McVeigh, Kaczynski, and Rudolph. The paper ends with the hope that knowing the chronology of radicalization could possibly lead to detection, but their preference for isolationism, non-existent social skills, and survivalist mentality means that there would essentially no people who would notice or care that they had disengaged from society.
06
Mar 10
US Conference of Catholic Bishops and Health Care Reform
Since everything with the Catholic Church ultimately comes down to money, I’m having a hard time believing that the Church’s meddling in health care reform is due to their ideological and theological concerns over abortion and euthanasia. You’ll recall that Bart Stupak is obstructing reform over the issue of abortion, threatening procedural and parliamentarian shenanigans affected the Congressional calculus. I suspect that somehow it has more to do with the effect of reform on Catholic health care, given that it is one of the largest providers in the United States. At the very least, outlawing the funding of abortion with taxpayer dollars guarantees a level playing field with secular providers.
03
Dec 09
A Business Model for the Westboro Baptist Church (aka godhatesfags.com)
I’ve given up on my belief that the congregation of Westboro Baptist Church is actually a satirical performance art group highlighting intolerance. I still believe that they are batshit insane, but I no longer believe that that they take their special brand of crazy ‘on the road’ due to the strength of their beliefs.
For the unaware Westboro Baptist Church has made a name for themselves by crashing funerals of dead soldiers and making ridiculous religious assertions such as these made at the memorial for a dead US soldier [PDF]:
God Hates America, and
God is killing our troops in His wrath.
Thank God for IEDs.
Some time ago, I started reading up on Fred Phelps and WBS. I couldn’t understand how they could afford to travel, juggle legal bills, and maintain a church with a congregation (of less than 100 members) that is largely made up of family by either blood or marriage (~80-90%).
Then it hit me – could Westboro Baptist Church be a rainmaker for Fred Phelps REAL business – his own law firm? It appears that 11 of his 13 children are either lawyers themselves or are married to a lawyer. It’s easy to envision scenarios where a provocateur could incite a local government or private entity to ‘infringe’ on their ‘First Amendment Rights’, and then sue their way to the bank.
Since the freak show is due to be in town on 12/07/09, everyone would do wise to consider WBC true purpose – which incidentally is NOT spreading ‘the good news’. I personally recommend parody and satire, preferably for as large an audience as possible, although this is a good start.